Updating an opera to the time and place of composition is a common ­directorial practice, if sometimes a dangerous one. Set in 18th-century London, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress was written in ­Hollywood in the 1940s: ­Robert ­Lepage's ­production ­reinvents it as an allegory of the perils of stardom, with overtones of such films as Sunset Boulevard and A Star Is Born. Lepage's argument is that the opera ­reflects Stravinsky's awareness of the dissolution and hypocrisy around him. In order to make it stick, however, he does violence to the piece itself.

Stravinsky's Tom Rakewell sells his soul to the devil when he inherits a mysterious fortune and makes pleasure rather than prudence his watchword when spending it. Lepage's Tom (Toby Spence), in contrast, is whirled off to Tinseltown after being discovered in a midwest backwater by Fritz Lang-type director Nick Shadow (Kyle Ketelsen). Looks, rather than money, are what is being exploited here, as Stravinsky's viciously capitalist London is replaced by an unthreatening series of screen tests, location shoots and red-carpet parades. Later on, as ruin looms, Lepage makes points about television's ­erosion of cinematic glamour, which have ­nothing to do with Stravinsky.

The musical pleasures are notably mixed. Lepage doesn't really do that much to suggest the depth of Tom's ­dissipation, which leaves Spence stranded in the central section, though he's touching as the madman of the final scenes. The best performance is ­Ketelsen's Nick: dangerously ­attractive, he sings with sinister beauty and ­manages to be entirely credible, despite Lepage's intransigence.